FINAL TEST OF TOPIC IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A Study on the Reading Skills of EFL University Students

Fitri Olifia

2201409092

Thursday, 403-404

A Study on the Reading Skills of EFL University Students

1. SUMMARY

This study is conducted based on some finding of some studies that reading a lot is very important for EFL students without getting much exposure to reading materials in class, EFL students cannot make much progress. Realizing the importance of reading for EFL students, it is very crucial for EFL students to have good reading proficiency, and reading proficiency is determined by reading skills.

Considering the importance of mastering reading skills, the writers then conducted a research to get further investigation about what types of reading skills that the EFL students have difficulty and from those types, which one is the most difficult.

1.      Method

This writer focused on the investigation of the reading skills of ten batch-2003-students studying at an English Department of a private university in Surabaya. In doing the data collection, the writers used some steps.

The first step was to analyze the kinds of reading skills which were taught in the department. There are seventeen reading skills which were taught there: (1) scanning, (2) skimming, (3) improving reading speed,(4) structural clues: morphology (word part), (5) structural clues: morphology (compound words), (6) inference from context, (7) using a dictionary, (8) interpreting pro-forms, (9) interpreting pro-forms, (10) interpreting lexical cohesion, (11) recognizing text organization, (12) recognizing presupposition underlying the text, (13) recognizing implications making inference, (14) prediction, (15) distinguishing between fact and opinion, (16) paraphrasing, and (17) summarizing.

The second step of the data collection was to develop two reading tests. Each test consists of two reading texts. The researchers then developed test items based on those reading texts. The test items covered seventeen kinds of reading skills mentioned above. Each reading test consisted of thirty four items as the representatives of seventeen kinds of reading skills.

The third step was piloting the two reading tests. He piloting was aimed to help the writers to see whether the two reading tests had clear and good instructions and items. After piloting the two reading tests, the writers did some minor revisions concerning typographical errors and unclear instructions.

The next step of the data collection was to distribute the reading tests to ten students of English Department Batch 2003 students who had already passed all reading classes.

The last step of the data collection was to check and count the result of both reading tests. In doing this, the writers used answer keys. If the respondents’ answers were correct or in accordance with the answer keys more than 75%, the respondents got full mark. On the other hand, if the respondents’ answers were just in accordance with the answer keys less than 75%, the respondents got zero.

The first step of data analysis was to analyze the results of each reading test. The results were put in two separated tables. Each table was divided into four columns.

The next step of the data analysis was to list seventeen kinds of reading skills which were listed in the reading tests. Then the percentage of incorrect answer for each reading skill was calculated. The higher of the percentage meant the more difficult that particular reading skill for the respondents. If the percentage was low, it was assumed that the skill was easier for the respondents.

2.      Findings

The findings of the two tests were presented in a hierarchy from the reading skill which had the highest difficulty level to the skill which had the lowest difficulty level. The findings were:

No.	Kinds of Reading Skills	The Difficulty Level (Percentage)
1.	Recognizing Text Organization	72.5 %
2.	Paraphrasing	65 %
3.	Inference from Context	57.5 %
4.	Summarizing	47.5 %
5.	Skimming	42.5 %
6.	Structural Clues: Morphology (Compound Words)	40 %
7.	Prediction	40 %
8.	Interpreting Pro-forms	37.5 %
9.	Interpreting Elliptical Expression	37.5 %
10.	Structural Clues: Morphology (word Parts)	35 %
11.	Using a Dictionary	30 %
12.	Interpreting Lexical Cohesion	27.5 %
13.	Recognizing Implications and Making Inferences	22.5 %
14.	Distinguishing between Fact and Opinion	17.5 %
15.	Improving Reading Speed	10 %
16.	Recognizing Presupposition Underlying the Text	10 %
17.	Scanning	7.5 %

3.      Discussion

The most difficult reading skill for these students was recognizing text organization (72.5 %). Perhaps it was because many Indonesian students were not trained to activate recognizing text organization after they read a passage. However, there were only three wrong answers (7.5 %) from the total respondents’ answers toward scanning skill’s items. Therefore, it could be assumed that students did not have much difficulty with this skill. It might because they had already been trained to use this skill in all reading classes. As a result, they could use this skill effectively.

4.      Conclusion and Suggestion

The findings discussed in this research showed that each reading skill had different level of difficulty for the respondent. Further research could be conducted on a larger scale to produce wider results which could be used to make generalization.

2. My Comment

After reading this journal, I understand about the various reading skills. I didn’t expect that there are seventeen reading skills. Before I read this article, I just know three of them. They are scanning, skimming and summarizing. I also understand that reading is not as simple as I know before, that it will be very powerful if we can master those various reading skills.

From this journal, we can get any information to improve our ability in reading skill. So, we can master the reading skill easily.

3. The Benefits of the Study for the Teacher

As a teacher, we can get any knowledge about various reading skills and various degree of difficulty they bring to EFL students. We can also understanding about the difficulty our students may face in reading activity. After we know it, we can implement our knowledge we get from this research to our beloved students. We can use it as our references when we want to make a research or case study in our class.

This journal is so beneficial for us since as teacher. We also conduct some studies to solve our confusion about our teaching, method, students, etc. We can use this research report as guidance in teaching and learning the reading skill in the classroom.

Sex, Politeness, and Stereotypes

We are examining styles and registers, the way language is used, and linguistic attitudes, the issue of ‘women’s language’ is one which illustrates all these concepts in this chapter. There are four important issues that would be discussed.

A.      WOMEN’S LANGUAGE AND CONFIDENCE

According to Robin Lakoff, she argued that women were using language which reinforced their subordinate status, they were “colluding in their own subordination” by the way they spoke.

Features of women’s language

Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistic features such as the following:

·         Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see.

·         Tag questions, e.g. she is very nice, isn’t she?

·         Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.

·         ‘Empty’ adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute.

·         Precise color teams, e.g. magenta, aquamarine.

·         Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.

·         ‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.

·         ‘Superpolite’ forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.

·         Avoidance of strong swears words, e.g. fudge, my goodness.

·         Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a brilliant performance.

The internal coherence of the features Lakof identified can be illustrated by dividing them into two groups. First, there are linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance. Secondly, there are features which may boost or intensify a proposition’s force. She claimed women use hedging devices to express uncertainty, and they use intensifying devices to persuade their addressee to take them seriously. According to her, both hedges and boosters reflect women’s lack of confidence.

B.      INTERACTION

There are many futures of interaction which differentiate the talk of women and men: interrupting behavior and conversational feedback.

·         Interruption

Interruptions were distributed between speakers in the same sex-interactions. In cross-sex interactions almost all the interruptions were from male. It has been found that men interrupt others more than women do. Men interrupt more, challenge, dispute, and ignore more, try to control what topics are discussed, and are inclined to make categorical statements. Women are evidently socialized from early childhood to expect to be interrupted. Consequently, they generally give up the floor with little or no protest.

·         Feedback

Another aspect of the picture of women as cooperative conversationalists is the evidence that women provide more encouraging feedback to their conversational partner than men do. Research on conversational interaction reveals women as cooperative conversationalists, whereas men tend to be more competitive and less supportive of others.

C.      GOSSIP

Gossip is a kind of talks between two or more people (mostly women) about someone else’s information in informal context. It has function to affirm solidarity and mantain the social relationship between the women involved.

Women do gossips mostly to criticize other’s behaviour, but they are discomfort to speak directly in front of person they are talking. In gossiping, women mostly supporting or agreeing each other. On the other hand, men are not. They often mocking, contrasting or disagreeing each other, but those express solidarity and maintain social relationship among them. That’s why sometimes there are miscommunication between man and woman.

D.     SEXIST LANGUAGE

It is concerned with the way language expresses both negative and positive stereotypes of both women and men. However, in reality, it is more concerned with language conveys negative attitudes to women. Feminists have claimed that English is a sexist language. At first sight it may seem odd to suggest that a language rather than its speakers are sexist. Sexism involves behavior which maintains social inequalities between women and men.

According to the author, based on linguistic data supports the view that women are often assigned subordinate status by virtue of their gender alone and treated linguistically as subordinate, regardless of their actual power or social status in a particular context.

Code-Switching

FITRI OLIFIA

2201409092

THURSDAY, 403-404

DEFINITION OF CODE-SWITCHING

Code is a verbal component that can be as small as a morpheme or as comprehensive and complex as the entire system of language.

Bokamba (1989) defines: “Code-switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct grammatical (sub)systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event… code-mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound morphemes), words (unbound morphemes), phrases and clauses from a cooperative activity where the participants, in order to in infer what is intended, must reconcile what they hear with what they understand.”

TYPES OF CODE-SWITCHING

There are many kinds of code-switching. They are:

ð  Intersentential code-switching is the type of code switching when the language switch is done at sentence boundaries. This is seen most often between fluent bilingual speakers. In intrasentential code-switching, the shift is done in the middle of a sentence, with no interruptions, hesitations, or pauses indicating a shift. It often happens within one sentence or even a one phrase. The speaker is usually unaware of the switch, until after the fact, and for example, you have to find a kalo pedi (good guy) and marry him. (English-Greek)

ð  Code-changing, is characterized by fluent intrasentential shifts, transferring focus from one language to another. It is motivated by situational and stylistic factors, and the conscious nature of the switch between two languages is emphasized (Lipski, 1985, p. 12).

ð  Tag- switching involves the insertion of a tag in one language into an utterance that is otherwise entirely in the other language.

FUNCTION OF CODE SWITCHING

ü  In bilingual community settings will briefly be explained by giving a sample authentic conversation which will help the reader deduce ideas about its possible applications in educational contexts.

ü  In teachers’ classroom discourse will be introduced with its aspects as: topic switch, affective functions, and repetitive functions.

ü  Code switching will shift to students’ code switching by introducing some basic functional perspectives as: equivalence, floor holding, reiteration, and conflict control.

ü  Weak and strong sides of code switching in foreign language classrooms will be discussed with a critical approach.

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/92496/code-switching-and-code-mixing

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Sert-CodeSwitching.html